Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 20, 2026

Quantifying Corticolous Arthropods Using Sticky Traps
Published on: January 19, 2020
Decoupled plant and insect diversity after the end-Cretaceous extinction
Peter Wilf1, Conrad C Labandeira, Kirk R Johnson
1Department of Geosciences and Institutes of the Environment, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. pwilf@psu.edu
Abstract:
Food web recovery from mass extinction is poorly understood. We analyzed insect-feeding damage on 14,999 angiosperm leaves from 14 latest Cretaceous, Paleocene, and early Eocene sites in the western interior United States. Most Paleocene floras have low richness of plants and of insect damage. However, a low-diversity 64.4-million-year-old flora from southeastern Montana shows extremely high insect damage richness, especially of leaf mining, whereas an anomalously diverse 63.8-million-year-old flora from the Denver Basin shows little damage and virtually no specialized feeding. These findings reveal severely unbalanced food webs 1 to 2 million years after the end-Cretaceous extinction 65.5 million years ago.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
The Fossil Record
Introduction to Plant Diversity
Diversity of Protists II
Non-vascular Seedless Plants
Pollination and Flower Structure
Speciation Rates

